Inevitable
by PsychoticGirl
Summary: The first time I woke up was to a world of pain and darkness, but it was the crying I couldn't stand. What happens after Book 3.
1. Prologue - Waking

**Disclaimer: If I owned Raised By Wolves, I would have added a fourth book to finish the loose ends and that unbearable cliffhanger.**

**A/N: This is my take on what might (and should) have happened after the end of the third book.**

* * *

The first time I woke up was to a world of pain and darkness, but it was the crying I couldn't stand. The crying wasn't mine. It couldn't be mine because I felt more than knew for a fact that my own throat had already been shredded raw into pieces from straining not to scream.

Nothing made sense in this hazy trance of shadow and light with my body torn between hell and an empty void. All I knew was that if this was what hell felt like I needed to be there. For the moment I let myself fall into the calm, slumbering shadows I would never wake up a second time.

And I needed to, had to, but didn't want to. The pain I could handle. It was the crying I couldn't stand.

My body begged me for peace. I fought it to stay alive.

The second time I woke up I wished I hadn't. Everything was toobrighttooloudtoofast. Snippets of noise danced on my eardrums to the unsteady beat of my heart and the fever pitch brightness of my headache. At least the crying wasn't there anymore.

There was an itch going on beneath my skin, something trying desperately to claw its way out. There was too much awareness around me, too many sensations clamouring for first place in my blood rusted mind. It had taken all my willpower not to fall asleep for eternity by focusing on one single word: Fight.

It was all I could do to keep breathing out of my shattered lungs. Each breath burned with pain, and pain was life, pain was purpose.

Pain was pack. It was what they felt and I could feel it too. A faint niggling in the back of my head urging me to hang onto that wavering thread and slowly, torturously crawl my way up.

I knew it was night through instinct alone and it was the same way I felt her presence.

Her presence gave me comfort like a lone silver moon in the thorny woods of my soul. Her footfalls steadied my heart, anchoring it to whatever life I had left. In the frigid depths of oblivion, we were one entity and that gave me warmth.

It did not take the pain away or lessen it but it made things bearable. Time was counted in the number of inhuman crunches my bones made, in the amount of ways my name was being whispered, sobbed, screamed and uttered like a prayer, and most of all in the growing anticipation and dread as I slowly surfaced from this nightmare to a new one.

The third time, I woke up.


	2. Darkness

I was in a cage. I was in a cage alone in what looked to be the basement and I could smell, see, hear, taste and feel the fresh hell I was in. If I had thought lying half dead was bad, this was worse sevenfold.

The pungent odors of blood old and new, sweat caked with vomit, rusted metal bars and damp, dirt filled dust made me want to curl up into a ball and snap at anything that came near me. It smelt like cornered animal, wild fear and grief and loneliness with gnashing teeth. But that wasn't the worst.

It smelt of Chase when I had first met him behind similar iron bars.

A low whine issued from my throat and I jolted backwards startled, and immediately wished I hadn't done so. Pain erupted in flaming agony along the side of my leg. My leg, which was covered in soft honey brown fur and padded like a dog's. No, like a wolf's.

I was a wolf. The change had been a success and I could scarcely breathe at the realization. I could still recall the torture fresh in the depths of my mind where I had pushed it back as far as I could ignore it, yet my body betrayed me with phantom reminders of the rush of fur, claws and bloodied jaws.

At this point, I could not care less. All I felt beneath the shallow feeling of triumph and delight in my new being was a darker shade of deep seated relief, and most of all an echoing numb resignation that _this was what it was meant to be_. All of it had been leading up to this point in my life. Chase's death, paid for in blood to keep my human life and now I had traded, shed my humanity for this heavier mantle.

This was my new life at the worth of Chase's.

I should have known he had foreseen it and planned for the chess pieces to fall into place neatly and staged everything for something only he could fathom in his vision. It had to be done and I had no room to argue against the what ifs and what could have beens. After all, Callum did as he saw best.

I still did not know how I felt about it. About him.

Once, I had been a girl caught between two worlds, and now I was fully submerged in one. To survive in either was to fight. To survive in this uncivilized wilderness was to fight in its forest of new rules. From now on, every step I took would leave a mark. I could only trust it wasn't the wrong one.

I managed to hobble around in the cage, checking out my map of wounds. Courtesy of Callum, I had bites and claw marks all over my limbs and torso, a broken leg and arm that were still healing, and what felt like fractured ribs trying to mend themselves together. Only my face and neck were left intact, which made sense as a bite to the jugular would have left me dead within minutes. Ali would have freaked out upon seeing me.

The thought of her brought the crying back again and I shut my eyes for a moment against a wave of guilt that would probably wash over me for the next few weeks every time I saw her. However, I did not regret this. Ali would no doubt give me grief over my decision but she had to know it was inevitable.

Curling up in the darkness of the room, I went over in my head what I would say to her and the rest of them. My mind came up with nothing for there was nothing to say. Ali would hate Callum for the rest of her life and knowing I was now the centered cause of it made it that much harder to live with. Lake, Maddie and the rest of the pack would probably give me hell at first but accept it with pride later on. Knowing him, Devon would give me the most hell second to Ali. But he would understand.

I winced as I tried to sit up. I had to get out of this cage, face them and show them I was alive and well. Closing my eyes, I willed myself to change back into my human form. I opened my eyes and saw the same furry paws.

Change, change back, I want to change back, I thought hard, concentrating entirely on the image of human flesh and bone, skin and hair. A sharp twinge of pain struck up my left side leaving me gasping for air on the ground. It wasn't working, why was it not working?

I tried again and again and ended up in the same pained situation. A low growl permeated the dank air and I tensed before realizing it had come from the back of my own throat. Frustration was getting me nowhere and I was skating thin on my threshold for pain. I lifted my head and tried to howl but all that came out of my mangled vocal chords was a husky whine.

I could only sit here and wait for someone to come visit again. From my hazy memory it might be soon judging by the dimness of nightfall. I laid back down to rest, counting the minutes and hours in flitting pictures of my family, my pack and me, when Chase was still alive, when Devon was still here, and when Ali's smile used to be wider and reach the corners of her eyes.

I waited, half of me in yearning to get out and the other half in dread for whoever was to come.

At the hour of night when moonlight elongated the shadows of iron bars, faint footsteps approached the room and my ears pricked forwards following the turn of the door.

It wasn't who I had anticipated.

* * *

**A/N: So...I wonder who Bryn would meet first in wolf form...**


End file.
